Our Rather Simple Yet Chaotic Life: Valentine's Day Weekend

I finally starting feeling more like myself sometime late Friday evening after my bout with Ogre Fest on Thursday. Lisa and I had talked about maybe taking a road trip over the weekend with the kids and pretty much ruled it out but that all changed on Saturday morning. We packed up the kids and invited Bev and Ted to go up to, what seems like an annual trip, to Great Lakes Crossing for a bit of shopping. Great Lake Crossing, if you haven't seem my earlier posts an outlet mall north of Detroit in Auburn Hills. On the way up to shopping mall mecca, we stopped off at Original Gravity Brewery (yes, I got back on the saddle) for lunch. Original Gravity is a newer Michigan microbrew that was opened by a homebrewer. The feel of the place is similar to someones basement bar but with about a dozen or so fermenters behind the bar. The food consisted of basically sandwiches and snack food and the two beers I sampled weren't to my liking but other's probably found them pretty good. Ted tired the Porter, which I think was much better than the Pale Ale or the County Street Amber I had. I think I would go back to try the IPA that wasn't going to be ready until later this week.

After lunch, we checked into the hotel and then spent a good 3 hours or so wandering the mall. We really didn't buy much at the mall but did real damage at Kohls on Sunday morning. Friday, while looking for a place to eat, Katelyn decided it was time of a siesta and we didn't have the heart to wake her up so Pizza it was. Ended up eating pizza in the hotel room from a place called Papa Ramano's which ended up to be pretty good pie!

Sunday, we went to Kohl, stopped by the mall to let Shawn hang out at the video game room and then headed over to Ikea to wander around a bit. We did some damage at Ikea too. I ended up buying 40 wooden hangers to replace the wire ones in my closet, I need about 40 more, bought a bookshelf for Shawn's room, a couple of small display shelves for Shawn's room, a stuffed animal for Katelyn, some really cool rocks glasses and I'm sure some other items I'm forgetting. We also grabbed a bite to eat at their cafeteria. One more stop at Trader Joe's and then it was off for home.

Monday we took the day off since Shawn was off school for President's day and basically worked our tail ends off. Lisa and I cleaned, I vacuumed and mopped. Then upgraded Katelyn from her crib to her big girl bed. So moving around furniture and disassembling a crib pretty much took up most of the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. Tonight we will bring the futon from the basement and put it in the toy room to replace the bed we took out of there for Katelyn.

Yesterday we visited the tax man; we are getting a decent refund and will pay off a bill or two with it. They did sock me with about $1100 in tax for the trip I won last year but I guess that's better than having to pay for the entire trip.

One other thing I though was cute and caught me completely by surprise. The other day, Lisa and I were driving with Katelyn in the car and all of a sudden, I hear this tiny little voice singing the entire alphabet song! I guess that $150 a week daycare bill is paying off in some way. Kate never ceases to amaze me as of late. Every day seems to bring a new word or phrase. I don't know where baby Kate went.